School buses and similar vehicles are widely used to transport students to and from school and the sites of school-related activities, and in many instances the students are young children. These buses usually travel along preassigned routes and make frequent stops to load or unload children near their residences, and statistics indicate that a large percentage of accidents occurring in the field of student transportation occur during loading and unloading of the children.
One significant hazardous situation for the children occurs when the children leave a stopped school bus and walk in front of the bus to cross the street. In this situation, the driver usually remains in the bus, and if the children are small and walk in front of the bus in close proximity thereto, the driver cannot see that children because the driver's line of sight is impaired by the hood of the school bus so that such line of sight is above the heads of the children walking in front of the bus. Since the driver cannot actually see the children, the driver cannot determine if the children may be walking into a potentially dangerous traffic situation (e.g. moving vehicles passing the stopped school bus) which the children may not be aware of, but which are easily observed from the elevated vantage point of the driver in the bus, and the driver therefore cannot act properly control the movement of the children to avoid such dangerous traffic situations.
In an effort to alleviate the hazards associated with the foregoing situations, it is known to provide school buses with an extended crossing arm that is mounted on the front of the school bus for pivotal movement, controlled by the driver, between a retracted position along side the front bumper of the bus and an extended position at which the arm extends outwardly for a substantial distance in front of the bus. At its extended position, the arm creates a barrier which forces the children walking in front of the bus to go around the extended end of the arm where they will be in the line of sight of the driver and can be observed by the driver. While these known crossing arms have served to accomplish their intended safety function, they nevertheless have certain practical disadvantages.
It will be apparent that the crossing arm must have a substantial extending length so as to insure that the children will walk a sufficient distance in front of the bus to bring them within the line of sight of the driver, yet the crossing arm is only pivotally supported in cantilevered fashion at one of its ends so that the weight of the crossing arm can prevent substantial structural problems in designing a suitable pivotal support for the crossing arm at its extended position.
In an effort to overcome these problems, crossing arms have been made from light-weight fiberglass rods that have a relatively small and simple pivot connection at the bumper of the school bus. While the use of fiberglass takes advantage of the light weight of the material to reduce the aforesaid structural problems associated with mounting the crossing arm in cantilevered fashion at the bumper, these known fiberglass corssing arms also have several disadvantages. First, fiberglass is not resilient enough to permit excessive bending of the rods to form a closed loop, and it is therefore necessary to clamp several straight lengths of fiberglass rods together in a predetermined pattern to form a suitable barrier when the crossing arm is extended. This pattern generally results in the corssing arm that includes a pointed end for the crossing arm which may be hazardous to children, and the crimped brackets or clamps used to hold the several rod pieces together are relatively expensive to install and, because of the crimping, they tend to weaken the fiberglass rods at the points where the brackets are installed. Additionally, since the fiberglass rods are constantly exposed to all types of weather conditions, they tend to deteriorate in time so as either to form splinters that may be safety hazards or to break. Finally, in known types of fiberglass crossing arms, only a small portion of the innermost ends of the fiberglass rods are supported at the pivotal connections therefor, and this limited support for the lengthy crossing arms has a tendency to result in the crossing arms drooping or sagging in a downward direction from the pivot connection.
In accordance with the present invention, a crossing arm is provided which eliminates the necessity of using fiberglass and its attendant disadvantages, while providing a crossing arm that is properly supported, relatively inexpensive and easy to produce.